Gong

Gong is certainly not Lolo-Burmese, and may be a remnant of what was a more widespread Sino-Tibetan branch in the Myanmar-Thai borderlands located to the south of the Karenic-speaking area. It shows an unusual development from PTB *s- > ʔ- or zero, which had developed from ʔl- according to Bradley. Like Karenic, the ancestors of the Gong would have migrated down the Salween watershed (or perhaps even down the Mekong River) from the Tibeto-Burman heartland further up to the north. However, unlike Karenic, Gong word order is SOV rather than SVO (Mayuree 2006). Gong shows lexical links with Eastern Sino-Tibetan branches (Burmo-Qiangic, Karenic, Tujia, etc.) in general, but does not subgroup with any particular branch. However, the words for 'cattle' and 'horse' are from Sino-Tibetan branches in northern Myanmar, pointing to the former presence of Gong in the middle reaches of the Salween River valley (i.e., modern-day Shan State) before migrating down to its current location in the Kanchanaburi area of Thailand, located just to the southeast of the mouth of the Salween River.

Sources

There are two Thai doctoral dissertations with sufficiently long words covering two different dialects of Gong. These are:

    1. Gong (Uthai Thani): spoken in Khok Khwai village (คอกควาย), Thong Lang Subdistrict (ทองหลาง), Huai Khot District, Uthai Thani Province, Thailand. Source: Rujjanavet, Pusit. 1986. The Phonology of Ugong in Uthaithani Province. M.A. dissertation, Mahidol University. Data cited from word list appendix in pages 78-102.

    2. Gong (Suphanburi): spoken in Kok Chiang village, Huai Khamin Subdistrict (ห้วยขมิ้น), Dan Chang District, Suphanburi Province, Thailand. Source: Thawornpat, Mayuree. 2006. Gong: An endangered language of Thailand. Ph.D. dissertation, Mahidol University. Data cited from "Appendix B: Kok Chiang Gong Wordlist" in pages 179-188 and "Appendix C: Kok Chiang Gong lexical data spoken by speakers of different age groups" in pages 189-198. Note: Some forms are given for older generation speakers as opposed to younger generation speakers; these are from Appendix C in Thawornpat (2006). These forms are labeled as Gong (Suphanburi) - older generation and Gong (Suphanburi) - younger generation. Otherwise, forms labeled only as Gong (Suphanburi) are from Appendix B in Thawornpat (2006).

Sound changes

The reconstructions clearly show that Gong is not a Lolo-Burmese language, contrary to Bradley's classification.

Uthai Thani Gong also has the conservative initial consonant cluster ml-, with examples given below.

mlek⁵ 'kidney' cf. #207 PTB *m-k(y)un BACK / KIDNEY (*m‑glun in HPTB 2003)

mloŋ³ 'husband' cf. #1638 PTB *b/m-laŋ PENIS / MALE / HUSBAND

mɛ⁴mlɛ⁵ 'empty' cf. #5014 PKC *looŋ ⪤ *hlook EMPTY

For 'kidney', Matisoff's prior 2003 reconstruction is better supported by the Gong form. The reconstruction for 'husband' is also well-supported by the Gong form.

Tones developed from voiced and voiceless prefixes that had existed before the root. Tone 3 in Uthai Thani Gong developed from voiceless prefixes.

List of Proto-Gong reconstructions